Brough's writings on the technology, economic and social issues of communications at the intersection of the Internet, telecom and mobility.

March 21, 2010

3G in China

The inaugural issue of Gport Weekly has conveniently pulled together what's been published about 3G adoption in China. That's data from China Mobile (TD-SCDMA) and China Unicom (W-CDMA) but not China Telecom (CDMA 2000).

Obviously it is very early days for 3G adoption, but China Unicom has (at least) two things going for them.

First, W-CDMA technology is widely deployed in other parts of the world and thus well down the learning curve, so their costs should be lower. Second, China Unicom has scored the Apple iPhone deal. Whether this leads to wide adoption and direct revenues I can't guess, but it's clearly an important marketing and status advantage.